Under the mulberry trees

Under the mulberry trees is an intimate glimpse into life in one of the central neighborhoods of the Naples. A perspective that avoids stereotypes and sensationalism, focusing instead on the pauses and silences of everyday life.

Metaphorically speaking, the mulberry trees conceal the existential dimension of those who live in the Montecalvario neighborhood, a small village in the city of Naples with a very high population density. The mulberry trees, which once covered the entire area and served as food for silkworms, acted as a screen from prying eyes, a safe place for everything that should not be done in broad daylight. Today, those plants imaginatively represent a dimension invisible to most people, to those who do not proceed slowly, to those who pass through this space without breathing in its pauses, its downtime, its life purified of all sorts of exoticism, of all sensational events or actions. There is a present that runs parallel to the city represented, a present that challenges prejudices, where shadows are cold and poverty retains the smell of coffee and bleach, where there are ancient faces weighed down by a sense of predetermination. In this part of the world where everything moves in an adjacent and opposite way, as if at the antipodes; everything stirs and suddenly vanishes into oblivion. There is an evanescent humanity, a theater of bodies lost in everyday oblivion.